Social Life 1; Weight Watchers 0

For me, the hardest part about Weight Watchers is trying to find a balance between weight loss and maintaining a social life. I’m serious about losing weight, but I’m not willing to give up girls’ nights or part ways with my good friend Margarita.

I feel like I’m usually pretty good at the give and take of it. This week, not so much. I had 2 lunches, a film screening for The Nanny Diaries with the authors (Fabulous. Go see it. Now.), margarita Friday ($3 margaritas, I have no self-control. You do the math.), a girls’ night out for 2 friends’ birthdays, what could technically be called a barbecue but instead devolved into roughly 13 straight hours of drinking beer and eating red meat, and dinner with a friend. And that’s all since Wednesday. Even if you do 2-hour workouts, the gym simply cannot make up for that kind of abuse. I only gained 1.4 pounds, though, so obviously the workouts did some damage control. Thank you, Earl.

As some of you know, Polly-my-best-friend-in-California is fascinated by/obsessed with personality types. The beauty of having a best friend with her personality type is that she's willing to do hours and hours of research on my type to figure me out, and to be the best friend possible. Mostly I smile and nod (I debated putting that part in, but you know me too well to be surprised, Pol), but she found out something fascinating about my type this week. Evidently, mine has the single hardest time with weight loss because we're such social creatures, so we don't want to miss out on anything. We hate feeling like we're missing out on a party or gathering or experience by not joining in whole hog (which for me always ends up meaning 20 points in liquor). Also, the vast majority of people in eating disorder programs are my type. I find this information totally liberating, because it means it's not my fault that this is such a struggle. I'm hard-wired that way. While it doesn't mean I can give up the fight, it does mean I can stop beating myself up over it a little bit. Which just may have been what Polly's been telling me all along about this personality stuff.